A Very Vegan Thanksgiving!

So over 7 months ago, my sister bravely stepped away from animal products and took on the dietary lifestyle of a Vegan in the hopes of bettering her quality of life due to endometriosis. I was so proud of her for undertaking such a feat and even prouder when she stuck to it month after month. She and I have had numerous conversations about how interesting Thanksgiving would be as a Vegan, so I asked her to write a post about just that. This is uneditted and highly appreciated. To Erica, thank you, and to all else - enjoy!


Happy Thanksgiving!  I’m Erica, Holly’s big sister, and she asked if I would write about the joys of being a vegan for her Thanksgiving blog.  First I have to say that my sister is an amazing woman, and inspires me every day with her creativeness, her unabashed uniqueness, and her gentle caring spirit.  I’m honored to have her as my BFF4L!

Thanksgiving has always been right up there on my list of favorite holidays.  It has all the magic and familial closeness as Christmas, but without all the shopping stress and grinches.

Thanksgiving food is, by nature, comfort food and always induces a wonderfully satiated tryptophan coma (pay no attention to the negative food coma comments in the last post!)    This Thanksgiving is going to be different for me in that this is the first holiday season that I will be celebrating as a vegan.

I started my vegan journey back in April when I noticed that the symptoms of endometriosis were worsening.  Endometriosis is a condition where the endometrial cells which normally shed during a woman’s monthly cycle, start growing outside of the uterus.  This results in significantly more painful periods, and other not so wonderful symptoms.  Endometriosis was something that I dealt with as a teenager, but laid dormant during my pregnancies.  

About two years after having Brooke, I noticed that my symptoms were back so I did some research and found that a holistic approach to the condition is a diet free of animal products.  Hormones and the inflammatory nature of meat and dairy are said to “feed” endometriosis.  Conversely, a diet rich in foods that help your body dispose of estrogen will help relieve the symptoms and “shrink” the endometrial deposits scattered through your abdomen.  Those foods are vegetables!  Come on…get excited here!

So, back to Thanksgiving.  What’s a vegan girl to eat?  Obviously the turkey is out and the thought of a jiggling tofurkey is not really appetizing to me.  Fortunately for me, my favorite thing about Thanksgiving is the side dishes, and instead of reinventing the wheel, I decided that the best route would be to veganize all those classic sides.  The following are some examples of what will be on my Thanksgiving table this year.

The first thing I did in preparation was make about 16 cups of vegetable stock.  It’s very easy – just simmer good fresh veggies like carrot, celery, onion, potato, leek, mushrooms and handfuls of fresh herbs for 45 minutes and you’ve got a great rich broth you can use in all your sides.  Freeze big batches of this stuff to keep on hand for all your vegan recipes.

Stuffing, unless it’s Grandma’s giblet version, is inherently vegan.  I like to add apples to mine for a little sweetness.  I also saw on food network stuffing made with collard greens.  Interesting, but I think I’ll save that one for next year.  

Every Thanksgiving for the last few years I’ve made Bourbon Sweet Potatoes.  I dug out my recipe yesterday and was delighted to find that the only substitution that I needed to make was to trade off butter for fake butter.  I like to use either Earth Balance or Best Life Buttery Spread because they are made with Olive Oil so they are much better for you than that nasty margarine stuff.

Green Bean Casserole is another one of those must-have dishes for Thanksgiving, but what do you do about the Cream of Mushroom soup?   Unfortunately Campbell’s doesn’t make vegan cream of anything, so you have to make it yourself.  No worries.  A little butter and flour rue, soy milk, mushrooms and herbs and you’ve got yourself a vegan cream of mushroom soup to drown your green beans in.  And of course the French fried onions are vegan so you’re all set.

So you see, as a vegan you can look this holiday season in the eye without fear because with a little creativity and ingredient substitutions you can have a wonderful meal full of all the foods that make Thanksgiving great.  After all, Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for what you have, and this year I’m thankful that my endometriosis symptoms are completely gone, and I can enjoy a wonderful vegan meal with the ones I love.  I thank God every day that he has given me a wonderful family, and a terrific little sister who I am more proud of each and every day.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!